Return to Local Metro Detroit Farming

Growing up in Birmingham, I found it less a suburb of Detroit than a rural community.  Neighborhood roosters heralded the sun each morning.  The town was surrounded by farms raising all manner of crops.   My aunt and uncle lived on a farm just east of Woodward and north of Big Beaver.

Then following WWII, eager developers swooped in to throw up developments for the returning vets.  It was a time when veterans could buy homes with no down payment and they were doing it in droves.  They all needed a roof to cover their own crop of "Boomers."  Before long Birmingham, Royal Oak, Berkley and towns all over the area were teeming with toddlers riding the sidewalks on their Big Wheels.

As the farmland around Metro Detroit vanished and the urban parameter pushed further and further into rural Michigan, we were compelled to buy our vegetables and fruits from supermarkets instead of a local store or roadside stands.  My mom stopped canning and laying away our foodstuffs for the winter.  Frozen food made canning obsolete and nullified the relevance of Farmers' roadside stands.

Today we eat fresh fruit and vegetables throughout the winter, trucked in from the West Coast, Florida and even from South America.  We often have no idea where this food is coming from, who raises it and who is responsible for its safety.  Back when we bought locally, we got to know the farmers. We had some recourse when the their value fell short of our standards.  Now it seems we're at the mercy of faceless food conglomerates headquartered elsewhere in the Universe.

But wait.  Two overarching incitements are at work; rising transportation costs and high unemployment.  Taken together, these perhaps could revert us back to those verdant days of yesteryear.

With the specter of worldwide oil shortages looming just out of sight over the horizon, the cost of transportation likely will continue to rise.  For most of us, the cost of eating freshly raised food from other parts of the world year round could become prohibitive.  Food produced locally might be the only viable alternative.

No one argues that Michigan faces a high rate of unemployment.  The U.S. auto industry's great contraction has left many Michiganders desperately foraging for means of support.  Yet Michigan's number two industry, agriculture, is enduring a paucity of workers.  Ron Cammel writes in the Grand Rapids Press: 

Recently an agricultural group started its first-ever push to urge more urban folks to consider jobs in agriculture, where labor shortages often occur despite the secure nature of the work. 

“I hear from many individual companies – they need workers,” said James Byrum, president of Michigan Agri-Business Association. “The irony with the unemployment rate is there are jobs 10 to 20 miles from cities. On any given day, we could hire 10 to 20 people statewide.” 

In a bigger picture, Adam Kantrovich, a farm management educator at Michigan State University Extension’s Ottawa County office, said the United States might need to import food if more people do not get into agriculture at all levels. 

With less than 3 percent of the population producing food, people are so far removed from agriculture that not enough biologists, bankers, lawyers, engineers, veterinarians and economists have knowledge in food production issues to help the industry, Kantrovich said. 

“Do we want to rely on the Mideast or Europe or Africa for food and let them charge whatever they want?” he said. “It’s bad enough now. Just think if we can’t produce our own food.” 

Another factor that may herald a possible return to the land is the movement of folks from the suburbs to the city center.  This emerging demographic shift may be due in part to the rising price of gasoline. 

Demographer Kurt Metzger tells Fox 2 that city and suburban demographics appear to be evening out as black families head to the suburbs and young, white people move to the city. 

"White people and everybody (are) starting to find cities to be very attractive, and whites have been looking at the city of Detroit, the opportunities that the city of Detroit presents. It's cool. It's gritty," he told the television station. "We're seeing whites and young people moving into cities across the country. It's been a little slower here in Detroit than others." 

 From an article by Jennifer Conlin in the NY Times:

Recent census figures show that Detroit’s overall population shrank by 25 percent in the last 10 years. But another figure tells a different and more intriguing story: During the same time period, downtown people and everybody (are) starting to find cities to be very attractive, and whites have been looking at the city of Detroit, the opportunities that the city of Detroit presents. It's cool. It's gritty,"Detroit experienced a 59 percent increase in the number of college-educated residents under the age of 35, nearly 30 percent more than two-thirds of the nation’s 51 largest cities. 

As the cost of gasoline continues its upward trend, the city center's allure should only increase.  In the future, those McMansions way out there in exurbia may empty out nearly as quickly as the they have since the mortgage crisis began.  The land they're standing on may again be worth more for agriculture than for the abandoned and crumbling dwellings left behind.

So there you have it.  Rising transportation costs ultimately making locally produced food much more advantageous than imported, and also making the city center more attractive to exurban population.  The realities of the job market ultimately compelling local workers into the agricultural market.